Worth bothering with IB Plus for LON based PAX?
 

I'm based in London and have a BA Exec and Avios.com accounts, do IB Plus have redemption possibilities that are currently unavailable to me for flights between London and Spain, possibly including Vueling flights?

Should I bother with joining IB Plus?

It depends. It's not just redempton availability but also earning ability.

For example, Hilton hotels offer 750 Avios with IB+ compared with 500 with BAEC. Nothing like ex-BD's 1,000 miles per night up to 3, but 750 is probably as good as it gets these days.

IB+ has many more car rental partners than BAEC and they typically offer better earning rates.

I'm sure there are other examples.

As always, YMMV.

Richard,

YES!

Until very recently, you could book RFS on IB with Avios.com and ba.com - but now you cannot.

You cannot book RFS with IB+anymore, but I think IB taxes etc are lower for IB flights than BA taxes etc.

Obviously, you are still better with BA's RFS. But sometimes, needs must.

IB+ are also much better for long-haul (to IB destinations) with very little in taxes and fuel surcharges - albeit you have to get to MAD.

But IB+ are very poor in comparison for non-IB flights (require a return ticket and not so hot on cancellations, I think).

So, in summary, open an IB+ account.

Credit some miles - there are a couple of ways of doing this quickly.

Wait 90 days (which is why you should do it now, because you never know whe you might need IB+).

And you are set to go.

Transferring avios between BAEC, avios.com and IB+ takes just minutes. So it doesn't matter which scheme you keep them in.

But it is well worth having the flexibility.

I have an active Iberia account, with not a lot of activity, but enough to take advantage of the features mentioned above. But what happens when there has been no activity over a long period? How much time must elapse before the account is considered inactive again?

I haven't launched or started promoting my blog yet as I'm still building up the content, but this is precisely one of the things I have already written about...

http://flyingpiggie.com/2013/08/ib_plus/

Absolutely positively every BAEC member should have an Iberia Plus account and do something to activate it...

Since IB+ miles don't expire any more, I can't think of anything that would make an account "inactive", particularly if you leave a few miles in the account...

For whatever reason, I think they're just trying to avoid brand new accounts taking advantage of some of the benefits of IB+ using miles wholly earned on BAEC. Can't see too much reason why though since it's not a high hurdle to get over...

You've basically said it yourself. There are advantages to having the card. What possible disadvantage could there be from having another account open with the same FF currency?

It's the same reason I use a BAEC account as MAD based. Sometimes the spend and earn rates are imbalanced and allows you to get better value. I even managed to get a good deal on a hotel from BAEC because they were running a special after an IB flight.